food

Today I want to share the “dirty dozen & clean fifteen” lists with you guys. It’s all about which foods you should strive for buying organic in terms of your own health and the environment, and which are less harmful.

The “Dirty dozen” list is a list of the fruit and vegetables that contains most chemicals, and which you should always strive for buying organic. And the “Clean fifteen” list is a list of the fruit and vegetables that contains the smallest amount of chemicals, and which are better/more okay to buy non-organic.

The best thing would of course be to buy everything organic, both for the Planet and for your own health. But if the budget is too tight, then here is a list of the ‘worst’ ones (the dirty dozens), which are most harmful to your health, and a list of the ‘better’ ones (the clean fifteen).

Reference

I’ve been wanting to drink green smoothies more often for a long time now, but I just haven’t really found the right recipe. I’ve tried Greenwitch smoothies, which is such a lovely company where you can get green smoothies delivered every week, but I wanted to be able to do it at home so I could do it a bit cheaper. However, if you have the money I can recommend checking out Julie’s business.

The old saying goes “An apple a day keeps the doctor away”. But, I don’t really think one apple is enough, most of us need to eat A LOT more greens to be healthy and thriving, so I think we should change the old saying to:

“A green smoothie a day, keeps the doctor away”

Are you drinking green smoothies? Or would you like to join me and start getting some more vitamins and nutrients into your body? Then try this recipe! Ps, if you are going to start making smoothies, then I’ll recommend buying some stainless steel straws instead of using plastic straws

It’s January and a new year, and there’s no better time to start getting into lots of healthy habits to live your best life! I fully agree that we are all different, and that it might not be in your interest to get into healthy habits, I completely respect that. But, I do want to say that if you want to feel better, look better, feel more energised and productive and hopefully also feel much better once you get older – then these are some of the tips that might help you achieve all of that!

Here you go, some healthy lifestyle tips:

Get enough sleep

Preferably 7-8 hours each night, and the best is to get to bed before 10pm. Turn of the television and electronics at least 1 hour before going to bed since the electric blue light disturbs your body and makes it harder for you to fall asleep. Read a book, or have a good talk with a loved one instead.

Drink lemon water

When you wake up in the morning drink some hot water with the juice from half a lemon. This helps the digestion and it detoxes the body. After drinking this wait at least 1/2 hour before eating breakfast.

Drink lots of water during the day, but not while you are eating

Drink 2 litres of water or more during the day, but not while you are eating since this disturbs the digestion process and the absorption of the nutrients from the food.

Chew your food thoroughly and eat slowly

Chew your food until it becomes liquid before you swallow it. If you don’t chew the food enough, acid will be created in the body.

Exercise – move your body

Move your body, get your pulse up and sweat out all the toxins from your body. Moving, fx through yoga, also massages your organs and makes your body function better and creates more blood flow and improves digestion. It also releases endorphins which is a “happy hormone”, which makes you feel happier.

Drink herbal tea

Switch the coffee out with some herbal tea (fx green tea).

Mental health

Think happy and nice thoughts about yourself. Start to really love yourself and your body just as it is right now. Think that you want to take good care of your body by filling it with lots of healthy food, so it will be fresh and healthy all your life. Look yourself in the mirror each day and tell yourself that you love you <3

Do things that you love

Read, relax, go for a walk in nature, dance, talk, go to a spa a sauna – do things that makes you happy and spend your time with people who makes you feel good and who you love.

Take care of your body

Use natural products, and smear your body into oils. Drybrush your skin. Give yourself a nice oil massage on the body, in the face and your scalp Take a nice bath, scrub your skin. Just relax.

These were some of my favourite health tips for taking good care of oneself and ones body. I do want to notice that it’s all about balance. There’s no health in restricting yourself to only eat vegetables all the time, listen to your body and treat yourself once in a while as well, that is also healthy for your soul.
Please share some of your favourite health tips as well!

I haven’t written any interesting links down in the past week, and therefore I thought that I instead could share some of my health favourites with you today!

MatchaMatcha powder* is amazing and has 137 times more antioxidants than normal green tea, it is rich in fiber, chlorophyl, vitamins and it helps to lower the blood sugar. There are tons of benefits to taking the matcha powder, and I can only recommend you to try a matcha latte! (1 tsp of matcha powder, 1 cup of plantmilk, 1 tsp of coconut oil, pinch of ceylon cinnamon, pinch of vanilla powder and 2,5 cups of boiled water – blend it all together and voila, a lovely matcha latte!)

TurmericTurmeric* is another wonder spice, and just like matcha can turmeric also provide you with a lot of health benefits. It is anti-inflammatory, lower the risk of heart disease, cancer and much, much more. Turmeric can both be used when cooking, but also in a lovely turmeric latte – but remember to put some pepper in it as well, since this enhances the cur cumin with 2000%!

Maca Maca powder* has a positive effect on the hormonel balance and enhances fertility in both men and women, it can therefore be recommended for women who try to stabilize their hormones, on energy level and it is a real health booster which improves the immunesystem. I have started to use it in my oatmeal in the morning, and it can also be added into fx a matcha latte.

SauerkrautSauerkraut* is filled with probiotics. Probiotics is fantastic for your gut, and it helps improve your digestion and your immune system. I try to add some sauerkraut whenever I eat a salad once in a while. Another good way to get probiotics is in the form of kombucha. I also take a probiotic supplement each morning to maintain a healthy gut.

What is your health favourites?

*Affiliate links. But you can also find almost all of the above things in most health stores.

English:I think most of us have heard at some point in our life, that we need to chew our food and not just throw it into us. But why is that?

If you just throw the food into your stomach, the body is not prepared to digest something, which makes the big food limo you just threw into your stomach very hard to digest.

If you instead chew your food, this signals to your body that it needs to digest something. The breakdown process already starts in the mouth. The more you chew the food and make it more liquid before you swallow it, the better it is for your digestion and your body, since you make the work much easier.

It has also been proven that people to eat more slowly eat less food. Studies have shown that people who eat their food very fast, are typically also people who have a tendency to become overweight.

So a little tip is to chew your food until it is liquid before you swallow it. You can also try to have more focus on ‘mindful eating’. Try to be more present and mindful when you eat. Stop looking at your phone, computer or at the TV. Try to concentrate on your food, enjoy it and chew it thoroughly.

/ You can eat inflammatory food, or anti-inflammatory food. Inflammatory food creates inflammation in the body which lays the foundation for diseases (obesity, heart disease, cancer) and weakens the immune system and much more. Therefore it is very important that the majority of the food we eat is anti-inflammatory, since these foods can fight the inflammation in the body.

Simply said, if you want to be healthy and well – you need to eat mainly anti-inflammatory food.

I have known for many years what is healthy and what is not healthy for our bodies. But recently I just learned a new term which I had never heard before: alkaline food.

The philosophy behind alkaline food, is that the food you eat can have different pH-values. It can either be acidic or alkaline. The body functions best if it’s in an alkaline state, and therefore your pH-value should be 7 or above.

Why is it that our bodies should be alkaline?

If our internal is filled up with too much acid, this will be a soil for inflammation in the body. And inflammation is NOT good. If you have too much inflammation in the body, you have a higher risk of getting diseases such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, type 2-diabetes and many others. You can fight inflammation by eating more anti-inflammatory food (which I’m also going to make a blog post about soon), and by keeping your body alkaline, which can be done by eating alkaline food.

What is alkaline food?

In general it’s vegetables, especially the green ones, which is alkaline. Some of the best things you can eat is avocado, spinach and other green leafs, kale, cucumber, broccoli, peppers and celery. Besides that lemon is really alkaline, and a good tip is to start each morning with a cup of hot water with some lemon water.

What is acidic food?

Acidic food is meat, candy, cakes, sugar, coffee or alcohol. On the chart above you can see where the different foods are on the pH-scale.

Some of the things I’ve found especially interesting in the books I have read about alkaline living (Alkaline diet by Dr. Stephan Domenig and Alkaline Living by Bettinna Delfs) is that the Authors take a very holistic approach when it comes to living a healthy life. They mention how sleep, exercise, fresh air, happiness and happy thoughts also plays a big role in determining your healthy state.

English:
Yep, today it’s going to be all about milk. My own ‘milk journey’ has been a long one. Like most other Danes (or just people in general) I grew up with the information that I had to drink at least 1 glass of milk per day in order to be healthy. So I drank it for many years.

But when I was about 12-13 years old I remember starting to actually think about what it was that I drank. I got images in my head of this white substance coming out from a cow – and I literally felt sick of the thought and got nausea. This resulted in long periods where I stopped drinking milk. However, I always kept going back to drinking it, because I was still very convinced that I needed to drink it in order to stay healthy.

Milk and sicknesses I cannot remember the exact age, but I think I’ve been around 15-16 years old when I completely stopped drinking milk, at this time it was mostly because I had a lot of pimples and I had read about a connection between drinking milk and getting pimples/acne. Fast forward to 2015-16 when I started to learn about veganism. I watched a lot of documentaries and did a lot of research, and found out how unhealthy milk actually is. Yes, there is calcium in it – but there are also bad things in it.

For years we’ve been told by the milk industry that in order to get strong bones – we need to drink milk. However, studies are showing that the countries which drink most milk, have a higher percentage of people getting osteoporosis. Osteoporosis means that you get vulnerable bones and reduced bone strength. Besides osteoporosis there have been made several studies showing a connection between milk and several types of cancer, the development of type 1 diabetes and rising cholesterol.

Cow’s milk is for calves Just try to think about that sentence. Cow’s milk is produced by the cow, in order to feed it’s calve. Cow’s milk is thereby constructed in such a way to make the calve be able to grow big and become a full grown cow. Humans are not cows, and what’s in the milk is not meant for us. Yes, humans do need milk in the first years of their lifes – but it has to be from our own mother, breastmilk.

But what can you drink instead, and what should you eat to get calcium? You can just drink water. Very simple. You actually do not need to drink anything in order to get calcium. However, it can be difficult for many to quit drinking milk because they are so used to it, or what to use as a substitute when cooking food. But don’t worry, there are lots of plant drinks you can use instead – oat milk, rice milk, soy milk, almond milk!

But how do I get my calcium? You can get it through many things. Spinach, broccoli, tofu, sesame seeds, oranges, almonds, kidney beans, kale etc. In general you do not have to worry about suffering from calcium deficiency as long as you eat healthy and a wide range of foods, and that you eat enough food.

First you set the rice over, we usually use brown rice. Hereafter you cut the onion into small squares and roast it together with the garlic in a pot together with the curry paste. After this you cut the potatoes into small squares, grate the carrots and put this into the pot as well. Remember to rinse the kidney beans with water before use, and then add these in as well into the pot together with around 1 cup of water and add rice milk as you go (just add some more as it cooks, it should end up having a lovely creamy consistency). And after around 30 minutes you have a lovely dish with rice, beans and potatoes!

This Wednesday I had birthday and I celebrated it on Souls together with my mom, dad, sister and boyfriend. I had been wanting to visit Souls for a long time, both because it’s an all-plantbased restaurant, their food look so good and the café just look really nice and cozy. And it definitely lived up to my expectations. The food was so delicious, and the place was just really lovely. Yesterday I tried their “Souls burger” and sweet potato fries – so delicious.

A little bit about the place Souls was founded for about a year ago (which they actually celebrate this Saturday) by two Australians. The main thought behind the restaurant is to put more conscious thought into the food on the plate, and think about the footprint it leaves on the Earth to make the food. Therefore it is an entirely plant based restaurant, but the quality of the food is really high, and there have really been cared for the food, which contains a lot of taste. The atmosphere in the place is really cozy. There are wood everywhere, small flowers and green stuff, and all in all it’s just a really lovely ambiance. I can especially imagine that when the weather gets better here in the Spring and Summer, that it will be really lovely to sit outside at Melchiors Plads and enjoy the food, or a cold juice or smoothie.

I’m definitely going to come back again, because I really want to try some of their salad bowls, pancake stakes, their brunch, their chai latte and their coconut latte! So yep, definitely a recommendation from me.